I Love You, Man: Paul Rudd, Jason Segel and John Hamburg interview

We caught up with the stars of bro-mantic comedy I Love You, Man, Paul Rudd and Jason Segel and their director John Hamburg to talk man-dates, best friends and scooters. What we didn’t figure on was Jason Segel’s ability to incorporate the Muppets into almost all of his answers. (We think he might have been doing it for a bet.)

LOVEFiLM: Paul, according to Entertainment Weekly you’re the most loveable man in the movies…

Paul Rudd: That was a misprint.

LF: Was it?

PR: Yeah… It… It…

Jason Segel: You’re trying to come up with a punch line!

PR: [Laughs] I know! My brain was working too hard.

LF: With I Love You, Man and Role Models, you’ve had a couple of leading roles this year. Is that all part of the plan?

PR: There’s no plan. It’s just happened with the last couple of things. This one was a leading role, but I didn’t think about it any differently than anything else I’ve done. I don’t differentiate too much. I imagine I will do other supporting parts in the future.

LF: Have you guys been on any man-dates?

John Hamburg: I’ve been on my share of man-dates. I don’t know if I thought of them as man dates at the time, but suddenly you’re on the back of a guy’s Vespa and it’s a man-date.

PR: I know that actually happened because Tom McCarthy, who directed the movie The Visitor, who we both are friends with, has a Vespa and you said you clung to him “like a koala clings to a eucalyptus tree”!

All: [Laughter]

JH: I did say that, and Tom told me that I held him tighter than any woman that’s ever been on the back of his Vespa! But it was New York. It’s a little scary weaving through the traffic. So I think that’s the inspiration for Jason and Paul’s Vespa ride.

LF: Are you guys at the stage of your lives where you’re making more friends or shaking them off?

PR: You know, I’ve got a family and it just comes with the territory I suppose. I talk to my friends from college with a little less frequency. I still consider them great friends, but my world from a social side of things has certainly become smaller in the last few years.

JS: One of my favourite things in the world is making friends with strangers. I came here last year to write a Muppet movie. And as soon as I arrived in London, I went to the pub and made 20 friends with – this is the most homoerotic sentence I’ve ever said – I made 20 friends and they were all in the London Fire Brigade. [Laughs] But they all came to the screening last night. All my friends from The Washington pub. It was great.

LF: Who are your best friends?

JS: My best friend is a guy called Brian, who I met when I was 12-years old. We became friends because he is actually smart. He had a class right before me, so he would study and then give me the answers to the test and I would copy off him. It was the basis for a great friendship.

He lived with me for the last couple of years, and he left six months ago to go to medical school. When he left, I just gave him a proper bro goodbye, “Alright, later man.”, and I woke up that night at 3:00 AM in the morning literally crying hysterically in my bed, and I had to call my mother to calm me down because I was too bashful to call him.

All: Aww!

PR: You know, I don’t know if I have a best friend...

LF: Paul, how was it kissing a man?

PR: Fine. I thought that was a very funny sequence. I didn’t feel weird about it. Tom Lennon is a friend of mine. If anything was strange, it was that we’ve known each other for a long time. But I will do just about anything for a laugh, and that’s because I’ve always been desperate for approval and attention! [Laughs]

LF: Can I ask you guys about the man-cave?

PR: Here’s the thing: I live in New York City in an apartment where I don’t even have a kitchen table, so I think that it’d be nice to have a place to go. But I don’t really have that. Maybe in time…

JS: I live alone in a very spooky house. My whole house is sort of my man-cave. I have one room that’s full of puppets…

LF: What kind of puppets do you have?

JS: All kinds of puppets. I collect puppets from all over the world. I have Chinese marionettes and puppets that The Jim Henson Company made for me for Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

PR: I’m surprised you’re so good with women, with this puppet collection.

LF: Do you enjoy the company of women?

PR: If they have strings on them! [Laughs]

JS: Oh you can attach strings…

LF: What makes you laugh?

JS: Peter Sellers was my first human influence, but before that it was the Muppets.

PR: Surprise, surprise.

JS: I remember watching Kermit the Frog, and when you’re a kid, Kermit the Frog is like Tom Hanks, or Jimmy Stewart. He’s the original everyman, you know? And funny enough, I think maybe where my love for both of those things came from was I saw Peter Sellers on The Muppet Show singing a song called “Whiskey Wine and Wild Women.” And when you’re 10years-old, you have no idea what that is, you just think that’s just a fun song. And when the DVD came out a few years ago, I watched it again and you understand, “Oh wow! He’s singing a song about whiskey and wine, and wild women.” It made me realise that’s the genius of the Muppets. Children are able to watch that and enjoy just a guy singing with puppets, and parents are able to watch that and enjoy it on a different level.

Helen Cowley